Shortly after the arrests a bomb in the Datsun exploded, causing extensive damage to property. There was no loss of life because the area had been cleared. It is not clear from accounts of the trial whether the terrorists intended to detonate the device with a remote control unit, and the blast was caused by a fail-safe timer, or whether it was only fitted with a timer, as was the case in Gibraltar.
There were further arrests during the following days and Brown came under police pressure to testify against his accomplices. Brown’s wife was abducted from their home on the Twinbrook estate, apparently by the IRA as a means of pressurizing him not to give evidence. She subsequently returned home and Brown did not turn Queen’s Evidence.
One of the occupants of the Cortina, Siobhan O’Hanlon, was released on bail, only to be arrested a few days later with three other women, in possession of explosives and other bomb-making materials. When the trial of those accused of plotting to kill the RUC band came to court, O’Hanlon was acquitted. Police officers claimed to have seen her throw the pair of gloves recovered from the Malone Road out of the Cortina’s window, but the judge said he did not believe them. Although O’Hanlon was sentenced to seven years in prison for her part in the other incident, she was released after serving only part of the sentence. The Sunday Times later claimed that O’Hanlon was one of the IRA members to have survived the Gibraltar operation in 1988 – an allegation which she has denied.
Brown and McKiernan pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder the police band when they were tried in 1985. Daniel Quinn, one of those arrested shortly after the abortive attack, also pleaded guilty to attempted murder. Four others pleaded guilty to lesser charges of involvement with the Active Service Unit. During the trial it emerged that the ASU had carried out several other operations during the summer of 1982: an attack on an Army patrol on the Twinbrooks estate in May; a mortar attack on Woodbourne police station in June; and, in the same month, a shooting at an Army patrol on the Springfield Road.
Although the operation succeeded in its basic aim – saving the lives of the police band – it could be criticized for several reasons. In presenting their evidence to the court, the police claimed that the bombers had been intercepted by a routine police patrol which became suspicious of the two cars. This, on the evidence of the officer involved with the operation, was clearly untrue since the operation was mounted on the basis of informer intelligence. The surveillance operators failed to tie O’Hanlon to the bomb plot through photography or forensic evidence, and were reduced, in the opinion of the judge, to lying about having seen her drop the gloves.
In the end the RUC were forced to rely on Brown, the bomber himself, to try to implicate the others. Since the whole RUC/Army operation was mounted on the basis of informer intelligence, it is open to speculation that their original informer may have been one of those arrested, since knowledge of the precise details of the plot would clearly be confined to a small number of people. It could further be speculated that the security forces knew in advance of the ASU’s operations throughout that summer, but had allowed them to proceed to keep suspicion from falling on their informer.
What the whole episode showed was the difficulty of carrying out an intricate covert operation without resorting to an ambush. To the outsider it would seem that the security forces tactics were still worthwhile – after all, the operation produced several convictions and prevented the police band from being blown up. But if the police knew about the IRA operation in advance, they might have had the option of preventing it entirely, so ensuring that the lives of fellow officers were not put in jeopardy. Some of those in undercover units were left wondering whether it had really been worth risking the lives of so many people for the convictions gained, especially given the failure of the case against O’Hanlon. ‘It wasn’t a very glorious incident’, the man involved with the operation comments; and alluding to the O’Hanlon episode, he says, ‘It was that sort of thing which did lead to frustrations.’
The Belfast case was similar to the Gibraltar case in that intelligence indicated a car bomb attack on a band. But in July 1982, there was a strong reluctance on the part of security chiefs to authorize anything resembling an ambush. The Belfast incident shows the difficult dilemmas facing those mounting undercover operations, not the least of which was their decision to let the band continue with its concert engagement despite the fact that they were confident that it was under a considerable threat. But it was also an example of a successful joint police/Int and Sy Group operation: Brown and his accomplices were successfully apprehended by a force made up of both soldiers and specially trained police officers.
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The existence of élite police firearms units like that used at Governor’s Bridge resulted from the advance of Police Primacy. These units were intended to carry out operations based on sensitive intelligence much in the same way as the SAS. The Special Branch E4A unit and Bronze Section of the Special Patrol Group had been largely restricted to surveillance duties, although they were occasionally involved in operations, as in the Ballysillan Post Office depot incident. In early 1980, soon after Jack Hermon became Chief Constable, the SPG had been disbanded, to be replaced by a hierarchy of mobile support units. This was largely a presentational change carried out to overcome the negative public perception of the SPG.
Each police division had a Divisional Mobile Support Unit (DMSU) of at least one
